Oooooh, Look at the Pretties

Just found a new blog I'm thinking about getting obsessed with! She's in Glasgow and is an amazing knitter and a great photographer! Check it out: fourth edition!

Finished Object - Ishbel!!

Ishbel is finished!! And I totally and completely see why everyone LOVES it. It is delightful and now I want to make 8 or 10 of them. I have a friend at Lakeside who's made 4.



This is Ysolda Teague's famous pattern - there are over 3,500 projects on Ravelry right now. I added a couple of repeats of charts A and B because I wanted to use up all of my yarn. And yes, I'm due for a hair cut/color.



The yarn I bought three years ago at the Midwest Alpaca Festival. It is 100% alpaca in a beautiful subtle blue/brown/green. There wasn't a label with it when I bought it so I had no idea how much yardage I had.



I did Ishbel because you can repeat A and B as many times as you want and then finish it off. After every repeat I weighed it on a digital scale in grams (at the yarn store, I want one of my own!) and extrapolated how much yarn each repeat would take, so I could make it as long as possible.



I'm also working on some sleep socks for my sister who is in grad school in London right now. (I'm super jealous.) She's amazingly smart and in a really tough program, so I figured she could use some alpaca socks.



This is also helping me work through some of my Christmas knitting guilt. I decided that I wasn't going to knit Christmas presents for people this year (and Jeff keeps chanting "2000 and Mine!" at me) but I feel guiltly. So I'm knitting some Just Because socks for Sarah Beth.

First Sock Club!!

I'm so excited!! I just signed up for my first sock club.

I guess this proves just how capricious I actually am - I have given up lusting after STR (though I still rather hope that my birthday in about a month consists almost entirely of STR) to lust after something new.

I have long had my eye on tigerlilith's blog - I became a fan in 2008 when she was doing her "Sweater a Month" challenge - and when we were in Scotland this summer Jorah and I went by her studio in West Kilbride and bought some yarn. I actually haven't knit anything with it yet - I've just been putting it in bowls and admiring it - but I can't wait. She's got a great color sense and I love her 2009 collection.

Anyway, she announced on her blog last week that she's going to do a 2010 preview club with sock yarn, and I have been agonizing over it for the last several days. Finally, after I found this pattern on Ravelry, I decided to go for it - a double international membership. The yarns are a surprise, but they're going to be dark, rich colors, which I am ALL about.

I'm not going to be buying any yarn any time soon, so I'm going to take the opportunity to knit up some of that yarn I acquired over the summer. I already (finally) finished the Cabbage Leaf Baby Blanket and I've resurrected the Wisconsin Heartwarmer. I've also got three pairs of socks going and an Ishbel. The only thing I'm planning on starting any time soon is the next Big Bad Baby Blanket in jungle colors for my boss's jungle baby, due January 3rd.

No more than three pairs of socks at a time!!!!